Hurlingham plans to raise £8m in AIM listing of gun maker Manroy

A STOCK-MARKET listed group is buying the UK’s last remaining independent machine gun maker and raising up to £8m on London’s junior stock market to expand the business.

Hurlingham is buying Manroy, an East Sussex-based manufacturer of machine guns, gun mounts and other related products that has supplied Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) for the last 26 years.

Manroy’s flagship product is the heavy machine gun (HMG), which can be fitted to many types of light and heavy armoured vehicles, patrol boats, helicopters and aircraft and has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hurlingham plans to raise the cash by issuing new shares in the enlarged company, which will be renamed Manroy Group and listed on AIM.

It hopes to use the money to increase the number of products that the group sells and to expand it into new regions. The group’s adviser is Arbuthnot. Hurlingham’s chairman Andrew Blurton said Manroy was an established, profitable and cash-generative business with good expansion prospects and relatively few rivals.“We are very pleased to have identified this opportunity,” he said.

Manroy’s chief executive Glyn Bottomley said the firm had significant overseas customers and would seek acquisitions.

“The admission to trading on AIM, along with our existing relationship with the MoD, will help the enlarged group to enter additional export markets.”

Manroy also has redesigned and resumed production of the general-purpose machine gun. It has won its first order for parts. In 2008/9, Manroy made a pre-tax profit of £2.1m.